Where home cooking is always in season! Kitchens are the heart of the house. Please join me as I do some cooking and chat about life in general, usually with an Italian accent!

May 2012

May 31, 2012

I swear I’m not trying to rub it in, but unless you are in central Italy, right now, and unless it rains again, you probably won’t be able to taste the elusive prugnolo mushroom.

There is a prugnolo cult in Umbria. Small signs pop up on restaurant windows simply announcing ‘prugnolo’. Nothing more. No dish is mentioned, no hint that it’s a spring mushroom; it’s an insider thing. That would be an insider who is willing to pay for her pleasure.

They were in the market the other day, slyly seducing me, pretending they were just another white button mushroom. Sprawled about in a basket, they lolled around waiting to be noticed. My favorite vegetable seller got a big grin on her face when I asked, “Prugnoli?” Now, the smile could have been because she liked the mushrooms, or it could have been the thought of a big sale that put the glint in her eye. Regardless, I was curious and wanted to play with those mysterious mushrooms. As I was selecting my mushrooms, she admonished me to eat them whole, not to slice them. Then in a fit of possibly guilty generosity, she threw in two stalks of leek and told me to use them in the sauce.

l wasn’t really sure what to do with them but I thought a simple pasta with melted leek and sautéed prugnoli might be the perfect dressing to show off our funghi’s special flavor.

The leeks were thinly sliced, gently cooked in white wine and olive oil. The mushrooms were given a light cleaning and tossed into the warm leek mixture, cooking them just long enough to become tender. A final dusting of parsley and a swirl of sweet butter and the prugnoli came to our dinner table. Did they live up to their hype? My first bite was .... disappointing. Maybe I was expecting the punch of a porcini mushroom, but instead it was a subtle sensation. The little mushrooms have a distinctive tooth: almost a crunch. The flavor is delicate, gently fragrant and it takes my jaded palate a moment to cool down and embrace that understated, yet complex flavor.

As I’m pondering my prugnoli pasta, I look up at my dining companions and we all realize we finished every last drop of pasta in our bowls, and that would be the definition of tasty!

May 21, 2012

Like a marriage between a nobleman and a peasant, elegant saffron marries with the humble celery leaf, creating a bit of risotto magic.

Arguably, Risotto Milanese in one form or another, has been served for centuries. The grains of risotto rice are bathed in creamy Parmigiano, a rich golden hue stained with the bitter sweet saffron, and possibly with a sprinkle of edible gold to satisfy the eye as well as the stomach. Why arguably? Because the origins of this dish are as mythical as a Cesear salad or spaghetti carbonara, including the tradition of serving risotto Milanese with gold foil. Ask 5 Italian historians their opinion, and you will receive at least 12 theories on the origins of any dish.

Shall we yank back the misty veils of history, and get real? I’m standing in our orto where most of the celery had wintered over and is now very robust. Which meant, I better chop some of this down and start using it!

The celery in our orto is extremely flavorful; it’s celery on steroids. But it is also tough and fibrous, so it’s best used cooked, instead of raw. Our celery is like some robust, weather beaten country peasant. Store bought celery is like your pallid cousin who lives in the city and is afraid of dirt.

I threw some chopped celery into a sauce on the stove, and now I was left with a pile of leaves. It seemed sinful and careless to throw away these perfectly good leaves, but as they were soooo intensely flavored, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. As an experiment, I threw the leaves, a few stalks and bit of onion into the stock pot and let it simmer for about 2 hours. Voila`! Pure celery stock, clear, greenish gold and intensely flavored.

Now what do I do with it? I was trying to be thrifty and oh, so Bonne Femme and now I’d spent more time and energy on the damn celery leaves and I still didn’t know what to do with them. I was a Bad Femme, not a Bonne Femme!

Finally inspiration struck: brodo for risotto! Normally, I use a small bit of soffrito in my risotto: that holy trinity of chopped carrot, onion, and celery. This time it was soffrito minus the celery and it was delicious. A nice flavor bump that married well with the cheese and saffron. Give it a try next time you’ve got a big handful of celery leaves, even if they are pallid city cousins to my robust orto celery!

I also had some fresh peas on hand that needed to be eaten.. so they went to the risotto as well. That’s the beauty of risotto, it’s very forgiving, you can make risotto out of just about anything.

Proceed as you would with any risotto. Gently sauté the rice grains with the chopped carrot and celery. Slowly begin adding the warm celery stock, adding more as the rice grains absorb the stock.When the rice is nearly done, add the wine and let the rice absorb the wine. When you deem the rice is ready, and the only way to really tell, is to taste a grain or two, remove the risotto from the heat and swirl in the butter and cheese.

And serve immediately...because you know what they say around our house! Risotto waits for no man! Buon’ apetito!

May 15, 2012

Here’s your quick-guide Pig Primer: Prosciutto v. Bacon: Prosciutto is a haunch that is air-cured. Bacon is pork belly that is cured and usually smoked. Prosciutto is usually eaten ‘crudo’ or raw, but it’s not raw in the usual way, it just means it hasn’t been subjected to heat; the ‘cooking’ is in the curing. Eating raw bacon? I don’t think so.

Ham v. Porchetta: Ham is a cooked haunch. Usually made on Easter Sunday, followed by bean soup later in the week. Porchetta is a full, roasted pig that has been stuffed with fennel and garlic, and is eaten at Italian festivals and gatherings. Both ham and porchetta have cult followings. As well they should.

Pancetta v. Guanciale v. Bacon: Here is where things get interesting. Pancetta can either be cured or raw, it literally only means pork belly. Cured pancetta is the closest thing to bacon, except it isn’t smoked and can be eaten raw, although it is usually cooked and used to flavor dishes. In Italy it’s usually found in slabs, like bacon. In the States, it’s round. I have no idea why. Confuses me every time.

Guanciale is cured pig jowl and is the upscale pancetta. It’s tender, properly fatty and just delicious. It is a precious commodity in the States (i.e. crazy expensive) and it’s dirt cheap in Italy. Well, not dirt cheap, but about 6 euros for a whole jowl is pretty inexpensive when you consider how little of it you need to add flavor to a sauce.

Pork belly is currentl in vogue, usually braised, soft, melting and super rich. In Italy, you can buy strips of pancetta/pork belly and it looks like thick slabs of raw bacon. Instead of a long, slow cook to melt the fat, here it’s seared over high heat, preferably over a wood fire. It’s the first thing that gets snapped up off a plate of mixed grill. If we serve it at home, we do it contadina style, or farmer style. Sear it in a hot pan, remove the pancetta when it’s cooked, toss in 5 or 6 fresh sage leaves cut into slivers, some boiled potatoes, and then add a good sized glug of strong red wine vinegar. And stand back, because it steams, hisses and splatters! When things calm down in the pan, deglaze and pour over the pancetta. Serve immediately.

And that’s your pig primer for today. There may be a pop quiz later this week, so be ready! Buon’apetito!

May 14, 2012

First, I hope all our mothers had a happy day yesterday! And to anyone who ever had a mother... well, Happy Day to you too. Why should mother's hog the spotlight, because, after all, what would a childless mother be?

We had a week of firsts. First rites of the spring season, first flowers, first adventures in Umbria. Italy is literally bursting with flowers right now and it's a marvelous time to be here.

Our back balcony is full of first flowers and we said our first good-byes. If you live in an area where people have vacation houses, you learn to say good-bye a lot. In this case, we all chose to not say good-bye, but to savor the sunset and then have some pasta, and pretend there were no good-byes at all. The first bike ride of the season, happened to coincide with 'pioppo' or poplar season. Pioppo spew white, fluffy, puff balls in the spring. There is so much pioppo fluff in the air, it's like a blizzard. It makes people sneeze, your eyes run, and as we were cautioned, when the rain comes, it makes the roads seem like they have been oiled. It also makes the forests incrediby spooky and evocative. In our garden, we had our first irises and the first little grapelets made their appearance.

It was warm and sunny enough for us to have our first lunch on the roof. And this isn't the first poppy of the season because the hills and roadsides have been covered in crimson flowers for the past two weeks. But, this poppy if for all the mother's out there, because we deserve it.

May 07, 2012

Carpe Diem! Sometimes you have to seize the moment, and when the local EuroSpin had a suckling pig leg on sale, it just had to come home with me. And you can’t eat pig leg all by yourself, because wouldn’t that just make you a little piggy? Which meant we had to invite some friends over, which suits us just fine on a Sunday afternoon. See how one little impulse buy has so many pleasant consequences!

I’ll admit to being a wee-wee-wee bit nervous about cooking my baby pig leg. The butcher at the ‘Spin told me to cook in a little wine and it would be buona! The Euro Spin is a chain of grocery stores in Italy, but they use local purveyors and have real butchers. They also have the most spectacularly dangerous parking lot entrances; there must be a franchise rule that states the entrance to all parking lots is to have a partially obscured view of oncoming traffic. Maybe they’ve done research, and a pounding heart and racing adrenaline are good for business.

Roast meat is an Umbrian tradition, and although I trust the butcher at the “Spin, in the hands of the wrong Umbrian you get very dry, over done roast meat. Or perhaps, that’s part of the tradition and I just haven’t gotten used to gnawing through a breast of chicken?

Regardless, I was sticking to my American roots and wanted soft, suckling pig. Which meant a long, slow roast (200F/93C for 4 hours) so the leg could bathe in it’s own fat, and the collagen would melt instead of constrict. I put lots of salt on the thick skin side, some young garlic cloves in slits in the meat, laid the leg on a bed of dried fennel stalks and bay leaves, sprinkled some fennel pollen over the leg, added a few good sized glugs of white wine, and sealed the roasting pan shut with aluminum foil and a promise not to peak until at least 3 hours had gone by. I confess I got a little nervous when I couldn’t smell anything after 3 hours, but when I lifted the aluminum seal, there was the leg, all plump and juicy. About 15 minutes before serving the ‘miaiolino’ I cranked up the heat and browned the skin. This was more for eye appeal, because I really didn’t think any of us would be gnawing on baby big skin when the meat was so tender.

But, man does not live by pig alone, so we needed some side dishes. Artichoke soup: this is a soup you do not want to make. (Note the soup theme: one you can’t have, one you can easily make and this pain in the neck soup that would be fine if you had unpaid slave labor). Gently simmer about 8 chopped and cleaned small artichokes, toss in a carrot and some celery and let simmer for about an hour. Puree the bejeezus out of the vegetables and you’ll get a thick, fibrous soup-paste. Yum. To turn the soup from fibrous to velvet, you’ll have to push the soup through a tami or drum sieve. Even with energetic music pumping, rubbing artichoke soup through a tami is just not my idea of a good time. Although the results were lovely served with a juicy lemon slice and some good olive oil.

Cavatelli pasta with spring vegetables. The first step is to make some cavatelli pasta, which is quicker and easier than it sounds. Make a basic fresh pasta dough (2 parts flour, 1 part egg). Let the dough sit for half an hour while you tami that damn artichoke soup. When you are ready, roll the dough into a long cigar shape, cut off little coin size blobs of dough and press and roll the pasta pieces down the nifty little cavatelli board into little ridged, sauce catching cavatelli. Cover and refrigerate until you are ready to cook them.

For the sauce, caramelize a batch of sliced red onions in white wine, taking care not to let them pass the point of caramel into cinder which is what I almost did! Clean some fava, shell some peas, chop some tomatoes, toast a few pine nuts, toss together in a sauce pan with the cooked pasta and you have cavatelli primavera.

For additional side dishes, invite generous friends who can cook and come bearing romano flat beans with pancetta and tomato and spinach studded with cumin seeds.

Pour some of that nice Chianti, relax and enjoy. That’s what Sunday’s are for. And being reminded that the next Sunday is now 6 days away, just seems so unfair.

May 03, 2012

Asparagus are everywhere. Wild, cultivated, in the market and in grocery stores; there is no escaping asparagus at this time of year. They’re even selling asparagus plants at the nursery. Lovely, little ferny plants, and in a couple of years, if all goes well, you can harvest a few stalks of asparagus. Never quite seemed like it was worth the effort, especially at this time of year when asparagus are so cheap and plentiful.

I didn’t like asparagus when I was kid. It was ...weird and mushy and strongly flavored. I wonder if my mother served us canned or frozen asparagus because we didn’t normally eat mushy vegetables. I grew up in the 1950’s when store bought vegetables were just being bred for shipping and convenience and fresh asparagus may not have made its appearance in the hinterlands of New Jersey. Remember when tomatoes were packed three in a row in a little plastic basket and covered in crinkly cellophane? The pale, pink tomatoes were so firm, in a pinch, they could double as tennis balls.

I had my asparagus revelation in my early twenties in San Francisco. We were invited to dinner by a business associate who I couldn’t stand. I dreaded going to ‘that’ woman’s house. However, she served this lovely steamed asparagus with a bit of lemon and olive oil. I loved the asparagus, but it didn’t change the way I felt about ‘her’. Just because she served a good side dish, didn’t mean I needed to forgive her Bitch by the Bay attitude.

Let bygones by bygones, and let’s get on with the soup recipe! This is a soup you can have as long as you have fresh asparagus.

To roughly chop the carrot and onion, you need to wear big black motorcycle boots and have a large dull cleaver. Whack away at the vegetables while dangling an ashy cigarette from your lower lip and grunt loudly as you chop. For the celery, don your best ballet slippers, a tiara, stand on pointe, hum a lullaby, and very gently slice away at the celery. Use a sharp knife so the celery won’t feel a thing.

Toss the carrot, onion and celery into a soup pot with a little olive oil and a two finger pinch of salt. Let the vegetables mingle and brown a bit in the olive oil, over medium heat, while you clean and chop the asparagus. A bit of brownage on the vegetables is a good thing.

You can choose any costume that suits your mood whilst cleaning the asparagus. I like to play doctor as I figure out where to snap the asparagus. Too high, and you waste, too low, and you’re eating wood pulp. I was taught to flex the asparagus and it will naturally break at the right point. I’m not really sure that it works, but it is entertaining.

With cultivated, grocery store asparagus that is all the same size and shape, I just whack off the ends at about the point where it looks like the spear becomes tender. There’s no need to peeling the spears if you are making soup.

Cut the asparagus into good size chunks and add to the soup pot. Add 4 cups water or chicken stock to the pot and let simmer for about 45 minutes. Reserve a few asparagus tips for the garnish.

Puree the vegetables and stock into a thick soup and return to the heat. Reduce the soup on medium high heat if you feel it is a bit watery.

Slice the reserved asparagus tips lengthwise and sauté them in butter. Add a generous sprinkle of salt and a good squirt of lemon juice. You want this garnish to be perky and lemony.

Right before serving, swirl in a knob of butter and a generous squirt of fresh lemon juice.

Fill the soup bowls, add the zippy little spear tip garnishes to the bowl and grate a bit of lemon peel on top of the soup.

Enjoy with a crispy, cool white wine, and all will be well on a sunny spring day.